Books themselves need no defense. Their spokesmen come and go, their readers live and die, they remain constant.
History buffs expect historical background in historical fiction. Mystery readers expect forensics and police procedure in crime fiction. Westerns – gasp – describe the West. Techno-thriller readers expect to learn something about technology from their fiction.
Even now I try to make each page compelling for the readers to get absorbed in the book.
More people have more access to more readers for less money than ever before in history. It means a lot of dross; but it means a lot of very talented people can find and nurture a readership in ways that were not possible twenty years ago. From a creative perspective, that is all that writing is about.
The fact of the matter is I always have a really high sense of responsibility to the reader, whether it’s a few readers that I get or a lot of readers, which I was lucky enough to get with ‘Olive.’ I feel responsible to them, to deliver something as truthful and straight as I can.
Fashion for a long time was very elitist and difficult to get access to. The access I can now provide to my readers live from fashion shows with my iPhone was never, ever possible before.
Laughter is healing and helpful and fun, and I see my role as an entertainer, and I want readers to leave my books smiling.
As writers we must, from our very opening sentence, speak with authority to our readers.
Twitter is fun because it lets me stay in touch with all my original readers who grew up with my books. I love hearing from readers instantly on Twitter.
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
Romance novels have the power to bring love into the lives of readers. Through the characters, we get to fall in love every time we pick up a romance novel. What could be better than that?
Good writers know that crime is an entre into telling a greater story about character. Good crime writing holds up a mirror to the readers and reflects in a darker light the world in which they live.
My life is at least as intricate as my readers’ lives. People say that ‘The Artist’s Way’ changed their lives, but when they talk about ‘Floor Sample,’ they tell me, ‘I was with you all the way.’
Rowling is a luminous storyteller. I love her sense of humor and the intricate wizarding world she built around Hogwarts. I think all writers aspire to be like her, to capture readers like she does. But I didn’t think about ‘Harry Potter’ when I wrote ‘The Bone Season.’
Critics have a problem with sentimentality. Readers do not. I write for readers.
However, if I can expand this to Top Cow or Avatar I’m helping the sales, however small, on my Marvel books because I’m almost certain to pick up some new readers.
I like to think readers appreciate a well-drawn near-future as well as a well-drawn far-future.
I actually really suck at naming books, so lots of years ago, readers were sending in their ideas for titles, and what we realized is that they were smarter than us. So we thought, Hey, go for it. So now we have a contest every year.
What I’m really addicted to is getting people to understand that if their kids aren’t competent readers coming out of middle school, it’s really going to be hard for them in high school.
I feel that there is not an endlessly expandable universe of fiction readers.
It is more raw and unfettered and I’m more likely going into something you could call extreme cartooning. There’s a lot of that in the course of ‘Holy Terror.’ There are interludes where there are pictures – cartoon pictures – of modern figures and they are all wordless. It’s up to readers to put the words in.
I travel to a lot of schools, and I see firsthand that while we do still have a lot of traditional readers, we don’t have as many as we used to. And we’re missing an awful lot of kids entirely… Do I want to get rid of the Internet? Obviously, I don’t want that because of all the amazing things it brings.
A lot of my work comes from what in Asia is called the ‘mind of wonder.’ There is not a lot of ‘mind of wonder’ writing in contemporary Western literature. I think that’s what appeals to the readers who are my fans.
There was no difference between my characters and the life my readers were going to have to face.
When I’m writing, I am lost in my book. Except family and close friends, I don’t care about what critics, publishers or readers might think.
Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.
I think instead writers and publishers and readers need to go to the places where people are, and make the argument that there is great value to the quiet, contemplative process of reading a novel, that reading great books carefully offers pleasures and consolations that no iPad app ever can.
I believe in books that do not go to a ready-made public. I’m looking for readers I would like to make. To win them, to create readers rather than to give something that readers are expecting. That would bore me to death.
People want to download publications quickly and read them without cruft. Publications that started in print carry too much baggage and usually have awful apps. ‘The Magazine’ was designed from the start to be streamlined, natively digital, and respectful of readers’ time and attention.
Through the eight books in ‘The Treasure Chest’ series, readers will meet twins Maisie and Felix and learn the secrets and rules of time travel, where they will encounter some of these famous and forgotten people. In Book 1, Clara Barton, then Alexander Hamilton, Pearl Buck, Harry Houdini, and on and on.
There’s inherent cultural imbalance whenever you’re translating from Chinese to English. Educated Chinese readers are expected not only to know about all the Chinese references – history, language, culture, all this stuff – but to be well-versed in Western references as well.
Considerations of plot do a great deal of heavy lifting when it comes to long-form narrative – readers will overlook the most ham-fisted prose if only a writer can make them long to know what happens next.
A writer is someone who tells you one thing so someday he can tell his readers another thing: what he was thinking but declined to say, or what he would have thought had he been wiser. A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too.
I want young readers to know that to tell their own story is the most important thing they’ll ever do.
It makes me nuts, the idea that if you put a political struggle at the heart of your book, then it has to be that the author – me – is trying in some way to push my views onto my readers.
Funnily enough, the Federal Reserve produced comics about monetary policy, and there is a good comic book guide to microeconomics and macroeconomics out there. But it is not really appropriate for younger readers; it is really aimed at economics students.
All writers know how important a good title is. It’s the first thing readers see, along with a knock-your-socks-off cover – a seductive ‘come hither’ for the story within.
These people are real to me, and situations keep coming up where their emergence feels natural. It’s like meeting old friends. I hope readers feel the same way.
I’ve included these little jokes and mysteries in my writing for the amusement of readers.
In Japan they prefer the realistic style. They like answers and conclusions, but my stories have none. I want to leave them wide open to every possibility. I think my readers understand that openness.
Writing is a way of living. It doesn’t quite matter that there are too many books for the number of readers in the world to read them. It’s a way of being alive for the writer.
I think movies do play a valuable role in turning people on to the act of reading. I think that phenomenon just creates readers. At first they’re going to love ‘Harry Potter,’ or they may love ‘The Hunger Games,’ but after that, they’re going to love the act of reading and wonder, ‘What else can I read?’
There are certain things in ‘Twilight’… As much as I’m proud of that movie and I do like it, I feel like maybe I brought too much of myself to the character. I feel like I really know Bella now. But most readers feel like they know Bella because it’s a first-person narrative.
Writing ‘Book 1: The Maze of Bones’ didn’t feel much different than writing one of my other novels, but I thought it was very innovative to offer the website and trading card components as well for those readers who wanted to go more in depth with the Cahill experience.
Butler’s novel ‘Kindred’ may be the book most widely read by readers outside science fiction; it has been assigned as a text in classrooms and has sold steadily since its publication in 1979.
Tyranny will make an entire population into readers of poetry.
Readers want to see, hear, feel, smell the action of your story, even if that action is just two people having a quiet conversation.
I think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.
We need to write books that publicists and marketers and booksellers and book club leaders and librarians and readers can get excited about. That have something about them that makes them stand out. That makes them shine.
